Joy in His Heart (5 page)

He shook his head and walked toward her. How could he have allowed this much animosity to grow between them? She sat up, her posture slightly defensive,
then she tossed the gurney pad to the ground next to her and inched carefully onto it.

“You should have rested,” he said.

“I thought with a concussion I was supposed to stay awake.”

“No. I’m supposed to wake you and ask you some tricky question like who the president is or what month you were born. But I can see you’re doing fine. I’ll be done with your shelter in a few minutes, then you can crawl in and rest while I get the fire going.”

She pointed to the completed shelter. “But that was my parachute. Why isn’t that my shelter?”

“Because your chute was ripped and that was the first one I’ve ever built. This one will be better and have less chance of leaking wind.” He held up his hand. “And before you go all feminist on me, you’re hurt so you get the better shelter. You may be the pilot in charge of fixing the transponder but I’m the doctor in charge of fixing you.”

He was surprised when she let the comment slide. She only said, “Can’t I do something to help you? I feel guilty just sitting here watching you do all the work.”

“Get stronger so we can start out in the morning,” he ordered, then picked up a few of the energy bars he’d found in the emergency packs. He walked toward her and held up some of the bars. “And to that end—dinner. Peanut butter, oatmeal raisin or caramel nut?”

“I’m not very hungry.”

“But you have to eat.” He tossed the peanut butter bar to her and she tried to catch it with her right hand but she was a southpaw and it bobbled into her lap. “I
seem to remember peanut butter being a favorite flavor of yours. Try to eat. You have to keep your strength up.”

She looked down at the energy bar and nodded.

Brian found Joy asleep when he came back after finishing the shelter and building a fire between the two structures. He let her sleep and ate one of the bars before setting about making her some kind of crutch. She’d have to take care of personal needs soon and he knew she’d hate it if he had to help get her to somewhere more private.

He located the perfect branch and cut it with the cable saw he’d found in the pack. After that, he worked on the crutch for quite a while, padding the top and hand-hold with torn strips of the sheet he’d used to bundle up the items he carried from the plane. Darkness was already falling when he finished. Though he’d worked hard to make it as comfortable as he could, Brian still didn’t see how she thought she was going to hike down a mountain side and then back up another in her shape.

He woke her a little while later and gave her some of the rations he’d heated up. While she went off alone after eating, Brian tucked the gurney pad and blanket inside her shelter, then helped her inside when she’d returned.

Feeling the need to fill in the awkward silence that once again settled between them, Brian tried making small talk about the beauty of God that surrounded them. He wondered aloud how anyone could doubt the existence of the Creator with masterpieces like trees and flowers as examples of His majestic wonder.

It wasn’t long before Joy once again fell into a deep
sleep. A few hours later he woke her and asked, “Who was the first woman to fly around the world?”

“Amelia Earhart,” she muttered sleepily.

“What book of the bible follows Genesis?”

She yawned. “Exodus. What happened to my birthday or the president?”

He grinned, knowing she couldn’t see him. “These are supposed to be pop quizzes. You had time to think up the answer to those. Go back to sleep. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”

“Shouldn’t you get some sleep, too?” she asked, her voice muzzy with sleep.

Brian gritted his teeth against the wave of longing and something he refused to name. Reaching for an impersonal tone he said, “My watch has an alarm. I’ll sleep. Don’t worry about me. I survived my residency just fine. Now, I mean it. Get back to sleep.”

After adding more wood to the fire, Brian ducked inside his shelter. And not a moment too soon. The skies opened up as he settled on the ground. He sighed, as the fires started to sputter out. It was going to be a long night.

Three hours later, hoping to avoid going out into the downpour, Brian called out to Joy from his shelter. “What’s the capital of New Jersey?”

“Trenton,” Joy shouted back. “Now will you go to sleep and leave me alone.” There was misery in her every word.

Brian didn’t like the way she sounded. So he ducked under one of the extra solar blankets and went over to her shelter. The rain was still coming down, but
nowhere near as hard as it had been when it started. “Are you cold? Or wet? Or in pain?”

“No, doctor, I’m tired. And if my partner in this ridiculous misadventure would leave me alone, maybe I could sleep.”

“You know, one of the symptoms I’m supposed to look for is irritability. Do you have any idea how hard it is to tell if you’re more irritable than usual? You’re always in a bad mood.”

She sighed. “Brian, please just leave me alone and please don’t wake me again. I’d rather die in my sleep than spend another minute awake in this. I don’t understand why anyone would go camping and call it a vacation. I really don’t. If you wake me again, I swear I’ll crawl through the mud and put you out of my misery!”

Without another word Brian left her, hiding a smile. He was sure she was fine. There was no sense in making them both miserable. Or was that more miserable than they already were?

For him it was only Joy’s condition and the thought of those kids out there all alone that cast a pall over the night. He closed his eyes and listened to the sound of the rain and the utter quiet surrounding them. For the first time in years Brian felt as if he’d come home. He’d mentioned the cabin his parents had owned to Joy earlier and, in reminding her, he’d reminded himself of those special days long gone.

For him those trips had been less about the companionship of his older brothers, and even his father, and more about time spent in the quiet of the woods. His
thinking had always been more focused, his distractions less noticeable, his dreams clearer and his prayers seemed to connect his spirit more completely with the Lord.

Now he once again prayed for guidance and patience with Joy, and that the morning would see her greatly improved. He hated seeing her in pain. He hated seeing her unhappy. Brian knew the plane had meant a great deal to her and was tempted to assume that its loss was partly responsible for her mood. But with the clarity his surroundings brought to him, he knew that, for the most part, it was his own presence that put her in the mood she was in.

He didn’t know how he’d fooled himself all these years. He’d thought Joy avoided him because she was uncomfortable in his presence. He’d assumed she no longer resented him for what had happened between them. They’d been young, inexperienced in life and love and had both made mistakes. But now he knew that not only did she still resent him, but he had also held a certain amount of resentment toward her, too. And he’d thought himself above that.

As a pediatric trauma surgeon he was unfortunately kept too busy for anything resembling a life. His incredibly busy career kept life rolling along at nearly the speed of sound. There was little time for introspection about anything but what the next minute, hour or day would bring. The only outside interest he had was stopping at the fitness club on his way home, and he did that so he’d be in the best shape he could be in to increase his stamina in the OR.

Even the faces of the children he was able to save and send home to recover had begun to blur, though those he couldn’t save were always with him. He wasn’t complaining. His career was rewarding. His days were full of sadness, yes, but there was joy, too.

And there was that word creeping in again. That person.

Joy.

With her so close at hand there seemed no way that he would escape memories of her that night. Memories of what had been. Thoughts of what could have been and never would be. He sighed and rolled over, determined to sleep, and put her where she wanted to be. In his past. But his dreams were of a future he’d long since given up on.

A future with Joy.

A
small scratching sound woke Brian from the mists of a dream. In his present state, caught between fantasy and dawn, he was quietly, completely happy. The rain had long since blown through, leaving behind a crisp breezy day. Sunshine dappled the ground through the shadow of the ever-thickening canopy. Expecting to see Joy outside her shelter, he looked out to find a family of chipmunks scurrying through the campsite, chasing each other. He chuckled at their antics. Then reality crashed down, dispersing the last remnants of the dream.

This was not a family camping trip with Joy and their children sharing their love of nature and each other. He and Joy weren’t held together by anything more than the circumstances of a plane crash and six lost children. Banishing the sadness that weighed down his heart, Brian checked on the rations he’d hung from a tree for safekeeping.

He started the fire again and checked on the container he’d set out last night to collect rain water. He was
pleased to see that there was enough to fill the water bottles and the canteens he’d found in the emergency packs. After adding purification tablets to the water, Brian crept over to check on Joy.

He was thankful she was sleeping soundly, but dark circles shadowed the delicate skin under her long, curling lashes. It made her appear vulnerable. Weighing their plans against how exhausted she looked, Brian grew troubled with her decision to begin a march to the crash site. She looked fragile, exhausted. How could he even let her try it?

He glanced uphill wondering how long it would take him to get up there to try his cell phone. Staring down at her, Brian made his decision. He scribbled a note and put it with some water and a power bar where she would see it when she woke. After a quick perusal, he grabbed another bar and some water for himself and hurried off to climb the rest of the way up the mountain. With any luck they would be home before nightfall.

Please, let me get back before she wakes up, Lord,
he prayed as he glanced back one more time at the almost completely hidden campsite.
Protect her while I’m gone, please.
He winced.
And if You could find a way to keep her asleep while I’m away, I’d sure appreciate it. Otherwise I’m going to have one angry female on my hands when I get back.

The heavy thud of a chopper flying overhead startled Joy from a sound sleep. She sat up too quickly, forgetting her shoulder and knee. Pain lanced through her body and she moaned. She could have bitten her tongue,
expecting Brian to come rushing to her side at any second with his solicitude and practiced bedside manner. But then she realized he was probably too busy waving one of the highly reflective solar blankets at the chopper. More carefully this time, Joy inched forward and pushed back the parachute material that formed the front wall.

Their small, makeshift campsite was utterly deserted.

Full-blown panic blossomed in her heart. Brian was gone. He’d left her. She was alone in the vast Adirondack Forest Preserve in the most dense and dangerous area of the mammoth Forever Wild preserve lands. Only then did she realize how quiet it had suddenly become. The chopper had moved on, never seeing their campsite.

And with it had gone their chance for a quick rescue.

Then Joy glanced back in the shelter and saw a power bar, a bottle of water and a note. She read it aloud. “Joy, I woke with the sun and I decided to chance the hike to the top of this peak. If my cell phone works, they’ll be able to find us from the locator chip in my phone and you’ll be home before nightfall. I have to try before the phone runs out of power. I should be back before noon if we landed as far up the mountain as I think we did.”

“High noon. The perfect time for a showdown,” she grumbled. She was furious, afraid and, worst of all, completely powerless.

She couldn’t believe he’d do this to her after his show of concern for her injuries. Especially since that annoying concern had included waking her from a sound sleep in the middle of the night to ask his dumb questions. After that she’d lain awake listening to a
myriad of scurrying and scratching noises coming from outside the shelter. She’d lain there for hours waiting for something huge to tear apart the flimsy shelter with its razor-sharp teeth and claws in a quest to get to her and make her its next meal.

She’d dozed off only once in the darkness and had awakened abruptly thinking bugs were crawling on her. She’d scrambled to turn on the flashlight Brian had left with her, managing at the last second to stifle a pathetic scream for help. There hadn’t been any bugs, of course. Even self-respecting bugs were smart enough not to camp out in the last days of April.

That had done it. Joy had decided to stay awake until she could at least see her hand in front of her face. She’d filled the rest of her night with prayer until the noises faded with dawn’s approach. Only then had she felt safe enough to let sleep take her.

Joy inched back into the shelter and wrapped her blanket around her shoulders to ward off the chill in the April air and the feeling of desertion that threatened to crush any reserve of courage. She glanced at her watch for about the hundredth time since making it safely to the ground and began counting the minutes till Brian’s promised return. Once again prayer was the only thing that kept her sane, but for the first time in years she was tempted to blubber like a baby.

Last evening, as dusk rolled solidly into night, Brian had sat across the blazing fire waxing poetic about the beauty of the forest and about how he saw God everywhere he looked. As far as Joy was concerned, God had allowed man to invent the internal combustion engine
as well as the trains, planes and automobiles it powered so they could look at His Creation from a nice, safe, glass and steel enclosed safety bubble.

She looked around now and could feel nothing of the wide-open spaces, freedom and quiet Brian found there. Instead she felt claustrophobic. As if the trees and animals were reaching out to get her. And far from quiet! How could anyone call the constant chatter of the birds anything but irritatingly noisy?

Joy was a city girl who had only just learned to appreciate the Chester County burbs. She’d never learned to be comfortable in the dense forests she skimmed over almost daily. Maybe all the rescues she helped with and all the smoke jumpers she’d flown into the dangers inherent in forest fires had compounded her childhood terror. Whatever the reason, she just couldn’t seem to conquer her fears. And she felt absolutely ridiculous about it.

The only good thing happening in this situation was that, so far, she seemed to be able to hide it all from Brian. Because one thing she knew she couldn’t tolerate was him laughing at her and gloating and poking at her armor because he’d found a chink in it. It was bad enough he knew how much more experienced and competent he was in the wilderness.

Looking around the little campsite Brian had set up, Joy had to admit he was both competent and experienced. She also had to admit being there with Brian was better than being there alone.

He’d surprised her with his knowledge, but more with his strength, agility and resourcefulness. Now that
she thought about it, smart people were often resourceful people. And he was certainly not the tenderfooted bookworm she’d always thought. He hadn’t needed her advice to scale the tree she’d been caught in anymore than she’d need his advice on flying.

His strong and toned body, though, still shocked and bothered her on an elemental level she refused to examine. Which made it more imperative that she hide her fear and get him to understand that, though he knew how to survive, she knew how to get them rescued. Because keeping him at arm’s length and subordinate to her was suddenly as important to her as survival.

Brian fought a growing sense of unease as he climbed higher and higher. He didn’t think it had anything to do with the helicopter he’d failed to flag down. Oak, maple and beech had quickly given way to birch after the rescue chopper passed him by. Now, as the way grew steeper there were more and more conifers. Finally, still plagued by vague disquiet, he forced himself to try analyzing the source of his worry.

Joy.

Something about the way she’d been acting didn’t add up. Though she’d worked hard to hide it, she was anxious in a way he had never seen her. It was a trait to worry about in someone who was usually as self-assured as she was. In fact, the only story he’d ever heard from her brother Jim that painted Joy as being less than fearless was from a period of time when she was about eight.

The Lovell’s had rented a movie for Christmas night—
The Wizard of Oz.
And for weeks after Joy had
plagued the household with sleepless nights due to nightmares the movie caused her to have. If he remembered correctly, Dorothy’s forest trek and the flying monkeys had scared young Joy, and not the wicked witch.

At the time, Brian had thought it quite hilarious to chant, “Lions and tigers and bears,” when she was least suspecting it. He’d reveled in the new information he’d gained to torture her.

Could it be possible? Could dragon-slaying Joy be afraid of the beautiful woodlands surrounding them? If that was true, he’d left her to battle her fear alone. His hand went automatically to his chest. The thought caused him to ache. He’d been hoping to save her from a long hike to the plane. But maybe he shouldn’t left her after all.

Was she hiding her fear out of pride? Did she think he would tease her? Still try to torture her the way he had back then? Joy had always been such a puzzle to him. Now he had to wonder if she’d been reluctant to abandon her plane because she’d preferred the risk of a crash landing to a long hike back to civilization?

Unsettled now, Brian took out his cell phone. He’d entered the high country and still his cell phone had no service. Suddenly he couldn’t stand the idea of Joy waking alone and frightened. And it looked as if he was on a fool’s errand anyway. Without another thought, he did an about-face and started back down the mountain.

Joy sat near the fire, her makeshift crutch next to her. She looked at it and looked around the little campsite then she eyed the crutch again. What was this? The
Swiss Family Robinson? Was there nothing the man couldn’t improvise?

A squawk from above made her blood run cold, reminding her of another thing besides inconveniences the Swiss family had been forced to contend with. She expected some wild creature to come bursting out of the bushes with hunger in its beady little eyes and an image of her on its dinner plate. She eyed a blue jay that squawked at her from a low branch with suspicion. She expected an angry flock of the feathered creatures to start dive-bombing her at her any moment.

But then a new sound joined the din from the birds. It was a cracking, rustling noise she hadn’t heard until then. Her heart sped up and she knew what real terror felt like. It was nowhere near noon so it couldn’t be Brian returning. If it wasn’t him, she knew from all the noise that it had to be something really big.

And it continued to move ever closer.

Joy struggled to her feet and held the crutch like a weapon. Heart pounding, she stood waiting for death in the jaws of a bear or something even bigger. Something the pitiful weapon in her hands wasn’t going to have the slightest effect on.

That was how Brian found her, blast him!

He pushed through the brush surrounding the campsite and stepped into the small clearing. Relieved and furious, she glared at him, fighting the temptation to take a swing at him any way for scaring a year off her life.

For leaving her.

“Uh-oh. I’d hoped you might sleep till I got back,” he admitted.

She nonchalantly lowered the crutch and balanced on it, trying to act as if she’d just been in the process of swinging it into position. “Did you? Did you also hear the chopper that passed directly overhead? It was gone by the time I could get out of the shelter.”

“Yeah, I tried to get their attention from where I was but the trees must have been too thick. And I realized as I was coming down from above why they probably didn’t see the camp. Out in the open a solar blanket would reflect the sun back up at them and act like a signal mirror to catch their attention. In here, all the foil did was reflect the trees. Unfortunately it was perfect camouflage. I hardly saw our camp till I was right on top of it. I’m sorry. I was only trying to keep us dry last night.”

Joy might be angry about his solo trek but she couldn’t blame him for making the night much more comfortable than it would have been without the rain protection.

“You did your best,” was all she could say without diminishing her righteous anger.

“But it kills me to think those kids felt what we just did when the chopper didn’t see us. That they might have seen us when we flew overhead yesterday and I didn’t see them.”

She felt her anger surge again. “And had you been here when the chopper flew by, you might have figured this out and we might be our way home right now. But no, you had to go off tilting at windmills.”

Brian frowned. “How do you know I didn’t get through to anyone?”

“Because the chances of your cell phone working here are slim to none. Why do you think I carry a satellite
phone? I don’t care what the commercials say. You don’t always get reception from isolated areas. The nearest cell tower is probably fifty miles from here if not farther.”

“Why didn’t you say that yesterday?”

“Because we got off the subject of the cell phone and my brains were a little scrambled. Besides that, I thought we’d settled this. I’d already won the argument. Why would I waste my breath with unnecessary explanations? Look, Brian, I’m willing to admit that you know what you’re about out here. I’ll bow to your expertise about our health, but you have to stop going off half cocked where getting rescued is concerned. You said you understood about getting to the plane,” she countered.

Brian winced slightly. “And I do.” He paused and his eyes seemed to cloud over as if he’d drifted far away. Then his gaze cleared and he stared at her for long moment and said, “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry I struck out on my own. But you have to admit you weren’t up to starting out at dawn. In fact, I’m not sure you’re up to it now.”